The following discussion is based upon a total of 104 authors of sex manuals
published between 1918 and 1972. In Chapter 8, the definition was provided of sex
manuals as legally available books intended for women and men to read in order
to obtain knowledge about their own physical sexual body, and that of the
opposite sex, and about physical sexual practice, primarily coitus. As this suggests,
the genre is almost exclusively concerned with heterosexual sexual practice.
Some of the texts contain only a few pages describing the body or discussing
physical sexual practice. The start date of 1918 is the year in which Married Love by
Marie Stopes was published. The immensely successful manual The Joy of Sex
by Alex Comfort published in 1972 is the last manual to be included. The period
has been divided into two parts, the first period 1918–45, and the later
period from 1946 to 1972. These two periods correspond to the inter-war period,
and the post-Second World War era. Few manuals were published in the
1940s and the division reflects the different sensibility of the new generation of
adults born after the First World War, as much as, or more than, the impact of
the Second World War.

The basis for inclusion of texts in this list is contemporary availability, usually
publication, in England. The manuals were found by going through the catalogues of the British Library and the Wellcome Trust Library for the History of
Medicine, in second-hand bookshops, in contemporary sex research and bibliographies by these researchers, and in the existing secondary literature. This is not a
sample of the manuals, as I have attempted to include all that were available.
Some books and their authors have undoubtedly been missed. These are most
likely to be reprints of pre-First World War manuals, American manuals
imported into inter-war Britain, most of which sold in small numbers, and
manuals imported or published in paperback after 1960, some of which were
not deposited in the British Library. However, the content and approach of the
manuals falls into loose categories and it is unlikely that whole categories have
been omitted. Where pre-First World War manuals were reprinted and sold
during the later period these have been included (Guyot, Howard, Robie,

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